Man Given Life Term in Retrial for 1980 Killings

After hearing from members of a shattered family, a Van Nuys judge sentenced a 66-year-old man Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a double murder he committed two decades ago.

“Hopefully, the trial here is the last word on this saga,” Superior Court Judge Sandy R. Kriegler said of Kenneth Crandell’s nearly 20 years’ worth of successful appeals, which took him off death row, won him a new trial and almost carried him to freedom.

Crandell was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder last month in his retrial in the shooting of a North Hollywood man, Ernest Pruett, and Pruett’s 14-year-old son, Edward. He also was found guilty of kidnapping Pruett’s then 15-year-old daughter, Marie, and trying to rape her.

In imposing the maximum sentence, Kriegler cited “the extreme viciousness and cruelty” of Crandell’s attack on the girl, whom he forced to lie on a sofa next to her brother’s corpse.

Members of the Pruett family said Crandell’s sentence offered some closure but little solace.

“Our family has been haunted for the last 20 years with the prospect of this killer’s release,” said Vernon Pruett of Glendale, 58, the son of Ernest Pruett.

Crandell was a family friend and boarder living with 69-year-old Ernest Pruett, a financially struggling widower, and his three children in a one-bedroom North Hollywood house.

During the trial, Marie Pruett Tyler, now 35, testified that she woke early on July 6, 1980, to find the body of Edward, who had been shot once in the head. Crandell told her he also shot her father, whose body was in another room. The two men had argued earlier.

Crandell, who took the witness stand, testified that he killed the elder Pruett in self-defense after Ernest Pruett shot his own son during a drunken rage.

Because the crime occurred so long ago, the case was difficult to prosecute. At least three witnesses have died, and in the mid-1990s all the physical evidence was accidentally destroyed by a court clerk.

Defense attorney Michael V. White, who requested a new trial, challenged the testimony of law enforcement investigators who had to vouch for a gunshot residue test performed by another investigator who had died. Kriegler denied the motion.

Sitting in a wheelchair because he is recovering from colon cancer surgery, Crandell showed no emotion Tuesday as he listened to the latest sentence imposed on him.

He then announced he would appeal.